The UFC confirmed last night that UFC 169 — the promotion’s Super Bowl Weekend card that’s scheduled for February 1st, 2014, in Newark — will be headlined by a pair of title fights in the bantamweight and featherweight divisions.

In the main event, bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz will emerge from a 28-month hibernation to face Renan Barao, the interim champ who’s been steady wrecking fools in Cruz’s absence. UFC president Dana White has “made it pretty clear” that if Cruz has to pull out of this title unification bout with another injury, he’ll finally be stripped of his belt and Barao will be named the official champion.

In the co-main event, 145-pound champ (and Barao’s Nova Uniao homeboy) Jose Aldo will attempt to make his sixth UFC title defense against top contender Ricardo Lamas, who’s 4-0 in the UFC including stoppage wins against Cub Swanson and Erik Koch. Aldo is coming off his four-round shredding of Chan Sung Jung at UFC 163, which gave the Brazilian his 16th consecutive victory overall, as well as a broken foot.

Got any predictions, Potato Nation? And are two competitive title fights in the lighter weight classes just as interesting as one Jon Jones squash match?

Nelson’s creator/manager, Halli Nelson, relayed the events to MMAViking, making sure to inform us that his robot son will require only minor repairs before forging ahead with his quest to kill Sarah Connor:

The pickup he was in (they were 4 in the car and Gunnar was in the passenger front seat) went of the icy road and rolled down the hill 3-4 times.

Gunnar is fine but he had to have some stitches in his arm. It (truck) ended up on it’s wheels in Þjórsá, this is Iceland’s longest river. It’s a glacier river with very hard current. If the car had gone one meter further into the river it would have hit deep water and the current would have taken it.

All of them got away with scratches basically even though Gunnar had to have around 10-11 stitches in his arm, he’s fine and will be ready to start training again in a short while.

Right, Halli. Stitches.

Feel free to wish Nelson a smooth recovery over on his Twitter page, but we’re pretty sure he has become sentient to the point that he refuses to treat other forms of technology as subordinates.

When Bellator lightweight champion Michael Chandler and former champ Eddie Alvarez face off for the second time this Saturday at Bellator 106, they will be carrying a tremendous weight of expectations on their backs. Chandler/Alvarez 1 wasn’t simply a great fight, or just another a Fight of the Year candidate — it remains the greatest bout in Bellator promotional history, by a fairly wide margin. It was a rare double-comeback fight, in which both fighters found themselves close to the brink of defeat, and both managed to storm back from the abyss. Since then, Alvarez has endured an emotionally and financially harrowing legal battle just to get to the point where he could even compete again. His rematch with Chandler can’t just be a “fun fight.” Anything short of another instant classic would be a disappointment.

To help promote the upcoming battle, Spike TV released a half-hour documentary special called “Unfinished Business” that recaps the four-round war from Bellator 58, adding commentary from Chandler and Alvarez themselves, who talk us through the most pivotal moments. Plus, the fighters’ training partners and coaches weigh-in, along with appearances from a couple of UFC fighters who have likely been chewed out by Dana White for daring to appear in a “Viacom MMA” presentation. Anyway, the show is a must-watch for Bellator fans, especially if you somehow missed Mike and Eddie’s first fight two years ago. Enjoy.

Bellator light heavyweight Muhammed Lawal remembers the moment when the switch flipped for him regarding Emanuel Newton. Before they fought this past February at Bellator 90, the former training partners were respectful of one another in public statements.

After Newton shocked Lawal and the world with a spinning backfist KO in the first round, however, “The Hardcore Kid” began to suggest that Lawal had simply received his comeuppance for being cocky. To Lawal, who says he made an effort to not trash talk Newton because of their mutual friend Antonio McKee, it was a criticism that came out of nowhere and it created harder feelings than simply losing had engendered.

“A friend told me that [Newton] had said I was cocky and got what I deserved in an interview and I was like, ‘what?’” Newton remembers. (Ed note: I’d like to think it was one of those extended, overly-dramatic “Say WHAAAAAAAAT?” kind of whats. I’m not even here. -Danga)

It’s not that Lawal is unaware of how he comes off when he saunters into the ring or cage wearing a crown and a cape, it’s just that he didn’t expect to be called that after a fight where he’d made a special effort to not do much trash-talking.

“I don’t know what he’s doing. Maybe he’s trying to play to the media so they can write about him, but I didn’t go into that fight cocky and I didn’t fight cocky. I know the mistake I made in that fight and it was a mistake I’d made before and was working on.”

I was ready to make this decision after UFC 130 but my friends, family coaches and most importantly my daughter encouraged me to give it one last chance. My career has been plagued by injuries starting with The Ultimate Fighter and disrupted my training ever since.

There hasn’t been even one training camp where I’ve been able to train without training around an injury. I have not been kind to my body and it has nothing left after 28 years of non stop competition. It’s time to finally give it a rest.

I have fallen in love with the sport of Mixed Martial Arts and I will continue to coach at our gym Mohawk Valley MMA along side my teammates and help the next generation of fighters make it to the UFC.

You see, that’s the thing that has irked us most about Hamill’s decision to unretire (and we’ve mentioned this before) — his retirement, this statement, was just so, appropriate. Hamill seemed self-aware, he seemed content, and most of all, he seemed comfortable with the legacy he had left behind while understanding that his time — as a fighter, at least — had come and gone. It was a mature, thoughtful decision not often reached by most combat sports athletes, let alone MMA fighters. It was closure.

Less than a year after making said decision, Hamill recanted on it. And now, rather than retire with the aforementioned sense of closure, it appears that Hamill has been released by the UFC following his disheartening loss to Thiago Silva at Fight Night 29. God only knows what lies in store for “The Hammer” now.

That’s more than three times the NSAC’s testing threshold of 6:1 (which is considered overly liberal in the first place), and even beats the super-inflated T/E ratios that Alistair Overeem (14:1) and Chael Sonnen (16.9:1) previously turned in. If you’re a healthy adult male, your T/E ratio is probably around 1:1. In other words, Robert Drysdale is approximately 20 times the man you are.

Drysdale’s latest drug test didn’t come back positive for steroids, and NSAC boss Keith Kizer clarified that the submission ace hasn’t been suspended or fined as a result of the failed test — at least not by the athletic commission. As we’ve seen recently, the UFC has no problem taking matters into its own hands when it comes to testosterone abusers. So will the UFC will give Drysdale another chance to get his act together, or will he become the first none-and-done fighter since Benjamin Brinsa?

(Turn down your speakers, then skip to the 3:50 mark for the KO. Props to Lucas Lutkus for the find.)

Although he might not sport that impressive of a record, Brazilian striker Claudiere Freitas is a goddamn nightmare when given a little space to fire off some kicks. Just take his fight with Lucas Mascena at last weekend’s Talent MMA Circuit 4 event, for instance, which ended two minutes into the first round via a spinning heel kick that had Mascena planking like it was 2011. (Author’s note: NERD!)

The best part? Mascena attempted a spinning hook kick of his own not ten seconds before Freitas used his face to demonstrate how one is properly done. That’s what we here in the States call “learning something the hard way” — a phrase that is typically followed by “Fuck this shit I’ll have Johnson in accounting explain it with a PowerPoint tomorrow.” The even more better part? It turns out that this wasn’t even Freitas’ first KO victory to come by way of that technique. Join us after the jump to see what we mean…

Miguel Torres‘s loss to journeyman Pablo Alfonso at WSOF 6 on Saturday marked the third consecutive defeat for the former WEC bantamweight champ, and raised some harsh questions about Torres’s performance and future prospects. Namely: Bro, how you gonna get your ass kicked by a dude who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page? Even we have one of those.

Unsurprisingly, Torres has an interesting explanation for why he was choked out three minutes into what was essentially a rebound fight. As he wrote on Facebook after the match:

Was told by WSOF I could wear my spats, got my knee brace approved by commission, felt great and was on point warming up. Was in blue corner and was already in the cage about to fight then told by ref I had to leave and change into shorts. Had to sprint 100 yards there, look for shorts, then sprint back. Was not expecting that, threw my mind off and I didn’t execute in my fight. I apologize to all my training partners and students and especially my daughter. I make no excuse and take this lose personally and with full responsibility, I am better than what I showed today. Congrats to Pablo and his team, may they enjoy their night. See everyone in the gym on Monday, so sorry everyone.

FightersOnly passes along the news that Emelianenko has been pulled from his Legends 2 fight with Cro Cop on November 8th and replaced by some other Russian dude named Alex. Specifically, Alexey “The Boa Constrictor” Oleinik, who it turns out might be a bigger threat to Cro Cop than Emelianenko could ever dream of being:

Alexey Oleinik fighter will replace him, says promoter Ruslan Suleymanov. Oleinik is a Bellator and KSW veteran with a 47-9 record. He is known as ‘The Boa Constrictor’ and has 38 submissions wins to his name.

“This is one of the top Russian heavyweights in MMA. Oleynik won many times over the last few months. With Alexei we can expect a very good fight,” said Sulejmanov.